Aaron Burch, Danny Caine, Kristine Langley Mahler, and Holly Pelesky with Michael Wheaton: The Autofocus Family Reunion
Join four authors from the amazing publisher Autofocus Books and their editor, Michael Wheaton, as we celebrate poetry, nonfiction, and the joys of small-press literature. Aaron Burch, Danny Caine, Kristine Langley Mahler, and Holly Pelesky will read from their Autofocus books in an extravaganza hosted by Autofocus head honcho Michael Wheaton. Don't miss this once-in-a-lifetime chance to catch four Autofocus authors in one place! Books will be available for sale and signing.
ABOUT AUTOFOCUS:
Autofocus Literary is a publisher of artful autobiographical writing in any form: personal essay, memoir, confessional poetry, journals & diaries, letters & e-mails, bits & pieces of each of these, or some other thing that makes art from your life. We publish a book imprint, an online journal, and a podcast. Autofocus Books specializes in relatively brief books that fit, and occasionally stretch, the boundaries of our interest in literary autobiography. We launched in early 2022 and currently publish six to eight books a year.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Aaron Burch grew up in Tacoma, WA. He is the author of a novel, Year of the Buffalo; a memoir/literary analysis, Stephen King’s The Body; a short story collection, Backswing; and a novella, How to Predict the Weather. He started the literary journal Hobart, which he edited for twenty years, and is currently the co-editor of WAS (Words & Sports) and HAD (and possibly a new thing to be announced soon?). He currently lives in Ann Arbor, MI and is online: on Twitter and Instagram at @aaron__burch, and the world wide web at aaronburch.net.
Danny Caine is the author of the poetry collections Continental Breakfast, El Dorado Freddy's, Flavortown, and Picture Window, as well as the book How to Resist Amazon and Why. His poetry has appeared in The Slowdown, LitHub, DIAGRAM, Hobart, and Barrelhouse, and his prose has appeared in LitHub and Publishers Weekly. The Midwest Independent Booksellers Association awarded him the 2019 Midwest Bookseller of the Year award. He's a co-owner of the Raven Book Store, Publishers Weekly's 2022 bookstore of the year.
Kristine Langley Mahler is the author of the essay collection Curing Season: Artifacts (West Virginia University Press, 2022). Her work has been supported by the Nebraska Arts Council, named Notable in Best American Essays 2019 and 2021, and published in DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, Brevity, and Fourth Genre, among other journals. A memoirist experimenting with the truth on the suburban prairie outside Omaha, Nebraska, Kristine is also the director of Split/Lip Press. Find more about her projects at kristinelangleymahler.com or @suburbanprairie.
Holly Pelesky writes essays, fiction, and poetry. She was once a homeschooled kid living in the suburbs of Seattle but has spent her adulthood in the Midwest, outgrowing her Fundamental upbringing. She received her MFA from the University of Nebraska. She works in a library, coaches slam poetry, and raises four boys with her partner in Omaha. Placing her daughter up for adoption will forever be the hardest thing she’s done.
Aaron Burch is both nostalgic and looking forward to what's to come, all while trying to enjoy the present as much as possible.
A fun and thoughtful collection of previously unpublished essays about skateboarding, riding horses, gardening, delivering mail, shooting baskets, cooking, record collecting, knitting, stitching, running, and many more things that aren't writing, except that, put in the context of this collection, maybe they are?
Danny Caine is struggling to adapt to new fatherhood when the Covid-19 pandemic upends, well, everything. All of a sudden, the glorious world he hoped to share with his son has shrunk, at times composing not much more than his rented house in Kansas and the small parking lot across the street.
Kristine Langley Mahler is tracking the signs. The year she turns thirty-eight, she keeps finding snakes, bears, ghosts, and ancestors at her doorstep, pointing toward the person she needs to become. As an eclipse approaches, she begins to follow their demands and account for their presence.
At 21, Holly Pelesky gets pregnant after her second time having sex. She decides to place her daughter up for adoption and then move far away from her fundamentalist Christian upbringing to start a new life.
